


So Vast and Shattered

by bold_seer



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous Time, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Moving On, POV Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-05-16 14:04:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19319692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/pseuds/bold_seer
Summary: A conversation, at the end of all things.





	So Vast and Shattered

The first thing he noticed was an absence - of everything. All his aches and pains were gone. Thanos had disappeared. So had everyone else. Place empty and indeterminate, neither dark nor light. He wasn’t really anywhere, but he still was. He existed.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.?” No response. He wore his suit, its remnants. Insubstantial tatters in a draft that wasn’t. It shouldn’t have been possible, but he could hear the word. At least hear his own thoughts. Or someone’s. Was he -

“No,” said a familiar voice, low and serious. Definitely not F.R.I.D.A.Y.

He turned. One weightless, floating movement. Without gravity and mass, but there was an energy to him. Strange was there, a translucent presence. Which was new, because Strange was anything but translucent, cards hidden up his sorcerer’s sleeves. Made of the same matter as Tony.

“You’re a ghost, Harry,” Tony quipped. He could’ve asked the obvious question. No fun. “Where are we exactly? When?”

Maybe the weren’t in any place, but a fever dream. Blazing hot for a nanosecond, before the darkness. _That_ was inevitable.

“Time is relative.” Strange’s reply was quiet, melancholy. A powerful hint. Not much left of the candle - or they had all the time in the world. Either way, Tony was beyond saving. Wouldn’t patch himself up. Neither would the doctor. Who said, words weighed down by regret, “I owe you an explanation. Selfish as it is.”

Before Strange apologised, which meant nothing in the end, Tony held up a see-through hand. “Pretty much guessed.” Send a man on a mission, he knows he could die. But if he knows he dies, he’ll try to change something. Every time.

Strange had needed Tony to do his thing. Die at the right stage. Not by the wrong Titan. Two birds, one Stone.

This was it. What he’d been waiting for. More than Thanos. This was the moment.

“It’s fine. Good.” It wasn’t fine. He was going to _die_. Somehow aliens and magic and time travel were all more credible than the existence of heaven. If it wasn’t a place on Earth, he needed a golden ticket. Chance of that? One in fourteen million sounded like good odds. A happy reunion with his parents - and Ho Yinsen, and the Black Widow, for a really interesting dinner party in the afterlife - probably wasn’t in the works.

The irony. When he’d thought he wouldn’t make it, he’d been panicking. Desperate for more of anything. Time. That final call. He _would_ die alone, surrounded by all those people. Who weren’t here, but there, somewhere. He sensed them, in the distance.

Getting used to dying. Great rivers for two hundred. Not the Mississippi, not the Amazon. It would be fine. One more step. Or maybe, by some miracle, he’d pull through, and he’d -

Yeah. Probably not.

Strange was leading Tony towards the end, with those shaky, determined doctor’s hands. Pushing him towards it? Off a cliff, into endlessness. Tony had seen his signal, that one finger, on which the entire universe balanced, invisible and unaware. Felt the burden shift onto his own shoulders. Force flood through his arm. The power in his fingers. He wouldn’t waste his last breath (which he didn’t have anymore - he wasn’t out of breath, but out of needing to breathe) on being angry. For Strange helping save, what, a few billion lives. A group that Tony happened not to be a part of.

He was always going to try his luck. “I want to see Morgan.” One last time, a dying man’s wish.

“I can’t give you that,” Strange told him. No negotiation. His tone was decisive, but kind, and Tony wondered if he’d done this before. Held the hand of a dying patient? Not during an operation, but afterwards. Strange didn’t seem the type. He also seemed like he had depths and layers, aside from the Magical Mystery Tour. Sort of like Tony. Could pick a worse person to guide him into the light.

The End. He should’ve been numb from fear. No one – well. Most people. Tony, most of the time. Didn’t want to die. Right? He’d closed his eyes before, without knowing if he would wake up again. His eyes were wide open.

Tony glanced at Strange, silent beside him. “Time,” said Strange, at once infinitely weary. “No longer in my hands.” Which meant the Stone, or just - time.

 _Then what use are you_ , Tony thought darkly. Except resentment and bitterness were corrosive, but more than that, pointless. It was nice, in a way, to have someone with him. A conversation, at the end of all things.

“Everyone dies.” Most wouldn’t, thanks to them. Strange didn’t appear too pleased. Tense and drawn, for a guy who shouldn’t have felt anything. Floating around outside his body, neat wizard trick. He didn’t think Strange was dying, but he did know death. Witness and casualty. “I have this hunch,” Tony started. “You’re not big on sharing things. Maybe work on that? But sometimes, your job kind of sucks.”

“Not as much as yours,” Strange answered. There could’ve been a joke buried in there somewhere, but he was so sober it was difficult to say.

Tony’s smile was lopsided. “Long time coming.”

They would remember him forever. This was like New York, but bigger, and without the PTSD. Which wasn’t worth dying for, don’t get him wrong, but other things were. People could debate Tony’s life and death on the internet. He’d made his peace.

“Honestly? Don’t want to.” He paused. “Would be nice not to. But if someone’s got to.”

He hadn’t been Iron Man for five years, only Tony Stark. The world could cope with having one less billionaire. Iron Man needed to complete what he’d started. Tony was collateral damage, but they were also linked. Without Tony, they wouldn’t be here. The world needed him. If he hadn’t changed it for the better, he would. For everyone. His loved ones. Himself. Tony _was_ Iron Man, until the very end.

“Okay.” He shaped his fingers into a gesture, the ghost of a greeting. “Live long and prosper.”

Tony Stark would exit the scene with snappy comeback. Or something unexpectedly profound? Not a great, ever-lasting silence. His mind was never silent. It made him nervous.

If this was Limbo, there was still time. Before the elevator took him somewhere, up or down. Unless they had weighed his heart, found it too heavy? Nobody thought about death when they were alive. Write their will in time. He’d tried. A message, some words of comfort. That it was going to be all right.

 _Tony_ , he thought he heard Strange say, but the sentence was lost in a gust. He closed his eyes. And they could’ve been back on Titan, or somewhere else, years ago. Before Morgan existed, before Peter died, before he knew Pepper was alive, and Rhodey. Before he trusted Steve again, or Steve trusted him. Before he turned back time, before he met his dad, before he did what no one else could, _no one_ , and –  


_Strange?_

When he opened his eyes, everything was gone.


End file.
